


PATRICK SAD (The Extended Edition)

by saybyebus



Category: SpongeBob SquarePants (Cartoon)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Character Death, Everybody Dies, Everyone talks like a tragic gothic author for some reason, Giant Walls of Text, Guns, HYPERREALISTIC AND BLOODY!!!1!, I wasn't on drugs when I made this aight, I'm Sorry, Improbable Weapon Use, Purple Prose, Satire, Surreal imagery, The Author Regrets Everything, Well almost everybody, Word Salad Philosophy, based on a trollpasta that was based on a certain infamous creepypasta, but i might have been sleep deprived, fellas this is gonna be really out there, intentionally bad writing, it's brief but it's still there so watch out, it's like a turducken!, so much purple prose, take nothing seriously, these characters just won't shut up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27501439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saybyebus/pseuds/saybyebus
Summary: Because tormenting you all with the original terrible creepypasta wasn't enough, I decided to extend my PATRICK SAD creepypasta (original ~850 words) to a multi chapter monstrosity. The original was written with a bot; this one is just me throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. I can't give a plot summary because there is no plot.
Relationships: It's Complicated
Kudos: 3





	1. The Dream of Squidward's Third Eye

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [PATRIcK SAD - A VERY SCRARY CREEPYPASTA (18+ VERY SCARY!!1!)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24078181) by [saybyebus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saybyebus/pseuds/saybyebus). 



> This is an extended version of the PATRICK SAD trollpasta I made a while back. While it does, ostensibly, have more effort put into it, it’s still all satire. It was my full intention to stuff this full of violently purple prose – prose which sounds deep and meaningful but probably isn’t. The plot, if there even is one, is purposefully confusing. Don’t take anything seriously, don’t treat it as actual beliefs I hold, and if something doesn’t make sense to you, it probably didn’t make sense to me either.  
> Content warning for graphic depictions of violence, major character death, and surreal imagery. I know it’s satirical, but it’s still kind of disturbing.  
> To the wannabe comedians who are going to ask if I was on drugs: I wasn't, and maybe get some original material for next time.

Squidward lay, and he dreamed. His mind detached from its mortal shell and passed into the netherworld of sleep. In the dreaming world one must forgo the control they exercise in the waking world. The reality of the sleep-realm exists, but it cannot be grasped – only touched lightly. Shrouded in the dark folds of the sleeping world, Squidward could see with an eye not readily open for him. Here, here was the cracking open of his third eye. It surged with an electrical energy as it gazed, unblinking, unflinching into the void of all things. The account it gave him was an infinite darkness not all too unlike the sucking void of space. And in that space there hung a platform, suspended on nothing. Squidward stood upon its face, gazing down into the abyss and feeling the abyss gazing back into him. He sent chills into the dark, and the dark ran its chills up and through him. The darkness pierced him deeply. It pried him open and looked him through, searching soul and mind and heart. And then it opened itself to him in turn, showing him its visions from the deep. The things he saw in the abyss were peculiar to him, not in the sense of absurdity, but in exclusivity, if you understand. He is not here to give his word.

Having looked into the darkness for as long as he did, and having experienced that darkness piercing into him with its own stare, he brought his head up. He spoke to whoever was listening, and he asked:

“Does this go to Heaven or to Hell?”

His voice was toneless, empty, dead. For what is sleep but death without commitment?

When that instant passed, it was swept away, as any other moment is. The present becomes the past at an alarming rate.

Then Squidward dreamed no more; he ceased to sleep and to view the ether of that other place. The moment had passed, with only memory to testify that it could exist at all. Once a moment is spent it disappears forever, cast into the rubbish-heap of the universe, and it cannot be brought back for anything. It joined an untold multitude of its brethern there.

Return to the real world; wake from slumber. Rouse yourself. Spongebob, Patrick, and Mr. Krabs attended a concert in the thin hours of dawn, long past the hour of reason and sense. The music floated drunkenly from the clam's half-shell composing the concert hall. Its notes slipped their way into skulls and bounced against the cranial cavity, to be exhaled on the breath. The purple smoke of truth hung over the event. Patrick made a long stare into the distance, mind racing furiously. He turned to his friend, his truest and deepest friend, the one called Spongebob. Like a stone through glass he broke the barrier of silence between them, and he asked,

“What has happened to Plankton?”

“I do not know,” answered Spongebob, “for it seems he has gone away and out of sight. The one at hand is not real, only a reflection of what once was true; this you know as well as I.”

“Indeed I know it,” replied Patrick, “I know full well that the one standing before us, who sings and performs under the designation of Plankton, all to sell his vile comestibles, is not the true form. I know that true form, and I loved it too. Did not you as well?”

“I would not say it were so, but I did care for him,” said Spongebob.

“What I wish to know, and therefore I request you sift through your own repository of knowledge to answer, is if you know why it was so that the Plankton of our knowledge and love has disappeared, and this impostor come to take his place.”

“I cannot answer, for my knowledge has been weighed and found wanting. To us, it is a mystery.” Spongebob blinked once.

“That is fair enough, for finite lays the library of any given man's understanding. It is so for mine as much as it is for yours. If I may, I pose another inquiry of you – do search within yourself to see if the answer therein – do you know where Plankton may be found?” Patrick exhaled the sweet mortal air.

“Verily I say, I do not, to my deepest and most bitter regret,” answered Spongebob.

It was in this moment that a fundamental change came over Patrick. He believed in his heart of hearts that locating the misappropriated Plankton was impossible, beyond the reach of the living's ability. And so it was, though he could not have known, and with the flight of the air of mystery from him, a new emotional sensation overtook Patrick. The green mists of mystery faded, burnt away in the light of the truth, and in their place was incited a rage of blazing infernal red. A sound wailed in Patrick's mind, one to which all other ears were deaf but his alone could perceive in their fullest volume. It was the cry of many wounded voices, pounding about within Patrick's spacious cranium, begging for release, imploring action from him, making supplication for blood.

Spongebob approached his soul mate, laid a hand upon his scapula, and asked of him, “Does all go well for you? Can you say that you are okay?”

Patrick made no answer, verbal or nonverbal; indeed he made no response at all, but stared straight ahead into the blue distance where dreams are born and die. He thought a little, and dreamed more. He dreamed of better things and worse things. He thought of high things and low things, of Heaven and Earth, of Hell and Purgatory.

“Soul mate of mine, the partner of my heart,” Spongebob said, “what troubles you so? I implore you, dearest friend – let your mind be at ease for this moment, if none else. We cannot know where Plankton has gone, and he may never return to our midst. How my heart is troubled to see you wallowing your grief such as you are! Rise from your sorrows, my love, and partake in the joy of this concert performance, the gifts of the Muses!”

“I cannot set my mind at peace, my closest and dearest friend,” Patrick responded with a heavy sigh, as though expiring his internal force. “Surely you are aware of what Plankton meant to me; I cannot say the frequency of which my thoughts rested on him. I loved him, Spongebob! More than my own life!”

A crystalline tear formed in Spongebob's blue eye, a tear of an angel. “Do you mean to tell me that your love, your deepest and most affecting attractions, were all for him? Forgive me – I am struck down with envy to hear it. Let this be my confession. For it was our vow to each other to carry out all our conduct in complete truth. Was that not so? Can anyone here testify to the contrary? I cannot bear to lie to you, my dearest and truest companion.”

Now it had fallen upon Patrick's fate to be overcome with emotion; in his eyes brewed the tears of intermingled sorrow and warmth; he threw his arms about his small yellow companion and held him to his breast.

“Oh lover, truest friend! May all that is good forbid that you ever, even for one moment of your lifetime, be consumed with such despair! If such a sorrow comes upon you, then I have failed you most wretchedly, and may the ignominy remain on me for all time. Yea, it was my own admission that I loved Plankton more than life itself, whether he remaineth with us on the mortal plane or otherwise. Even so, let it be known before God and all of us that it is you, my beloved Spongebob, who I treasure more deeply, more truly, more intimately than even my own soul and the heart of my being. I will not permit anything else to come between us – whatever makes such an attempt shall perish in a manner most ignominious and violent, and it shall feel the wrath of a thousand blazing conflagrations, and well deservedly so. Only the foulest blackguards would dare endeavor to rend the bond between true companions.”

Spongebob was without words in that moment; he rest his head upon the breast of his soul mate and was at peace. But as it so often is in a world wracked with violence and horror, that peace was not to last. It could not, even in its most honest intention. It is the way of man, of all things living, fallen from the precipice of greatness as they are.

For summarily and presently arrived the sponge's impudent overlord, a business mogul by the name of one Mr. Eugene Krabs. All who came into contact with him were well aware that his miserly nature defined him; what fewer still understood was that a deep aching misery also consumed him from within. As if by eldritch magic he had deduced the location of his undercompensated employee among the crowd at the concert, and his rage had been aroused. For he had not authorized his charge to take leave of labor on a Saturday, and for the cause of his ascription to the idea that he had the sole authority in the microcosm of his establishment, he would not suffer the sponge to go unpunished for his impudence. Thus in a great cry of anger he thrust himself upon the scene, and in the midst of Spongebob and Patrick, so that he may berate and castigate them.

“H'aargh!” he declared from the roots of his soul. “Wherefore you wander here, you wastrels? Do you not have much work to do at another place? That place being, of course, my establishment of comestibles? Wherefore you waste your breathy hours in a frivilous endeavor such as this? Drag your corpses to the Krusty Krab while breath still warms your throats and souls still inhabit the meaty shells of your flesh.”

“Mr. Krabs, my overlord and overseer,” pleaded the reasonable Spongebob, “I can-not do this thing of which you have asked! See, we have already sunk a share of our personal treasures into signets of access to this musical event, and no act of beggary could bring them back to us, with a change of mind to grace the occasion or not. We have exchanged coin for ticket, and such a barter cannot be effaced – though the ticket itself, you see, carries little value of its own merit. You might think it foolishness to give unto the ticket-bearers the items to which we ascribe monetary value, but it is not for the tickets themselves we pledge our gifts of Moneda. It is for that which the tickets do represent, chiefly, this concert we now attend in body and soul. Furthermore, how can any man say that money is of more value? Do finances hold much inherent value as they are in the most base and physical understandings thereof – that being paper, or struck metal, or in an even less tangible sense, strokes of the pen or electronic arrangements on a screen? This is our eternal problem, Mr. Krabs, having been so since some primitive hominid scooped up shells on the beach or lustrous rocks on the hillside and declared, 'These things have value; and if not inherently, then in the sense of value I ascribe to them; they shall represent a given value thus, and my possession of such values will grant me the permissions and ability to acquire the objects of my desire.' Is that not the progression of events, sir? And yet we cannot confine music to a fiscal value – ah, Music, the sonorous tones that fill our time as much as we fill space with works of art for the appreciative eye to behold. Do you not agree?”

“Spongebob, my concurrence is not upon you in this instance. You foolish imbecile. Fate has given you only a small allotment of time, and you have made the decision to expend it here? For music, which is in this moment and gone the next, with nothing to show for it? There is no posterity in this concert; you cannot trap the sounds for your keeping any more than you can chain up the wind. When you are advanced in your age, as I am by your own admission, it is with deep regret you will look upon this frivolous expenditure of your disposable income. But I will not weep for you! Come not to me with tears, Spongebob, for I shall not wipe them from your spackled cheeks. I will let them cascade down your elfin face and splatter on the ground; the earth will take your tears, but I will not. You must own your actions, for no-one else can or will.”

“You are a beast and a cruel will, Mr. Krabs!” cried Spongebob, clutching at his faint heart. “I cannot stand your impudence any longer – impudence not to me, mind you, but to the sensibility of the Fine Arts and music. Do you think the lovely Muses look upon your denigration of their arts with favor? For the sake of the aural art which graces our ears even now, I must act as an agent of justice. How now, and have at you, villain!”

At once Spongebob sprang upon his employer with a great shout of disgust. Like the claws a petulant cat his fingers clawed at the countenance of Mr. Krabs, scratching and biting and beating, in a display of wanton violence so alien to him, so uncharacteristic of this kind and gentle sponge who loved all. But it seemed his limit had been not only reached, but indeed transgressed, by the callous comments of this crustaceous cheapskate.

From an unknown venue he produced a length of hemp rope, and in his throes of violence against his avaricious employer, he flung the cords about the crab.

“My God! How can you do this momentuous, monstrous action, my son?” inquired the aghast Krabs, but his protesting cries went unheeded, for the sponge's anger had been irreparably aroused; no word of reason would sway him. The sole thought simmering on his brainpan was that the Krabs must be brought to repentance for his sins against the Muses. All at once he thrust the husk of a crustacean onto the ground and stood vigilantly over him, regarding him with a baleful and tear-stained eye, unblinking, ever-watching.

“I should die if I were not to correct you on your misdeeds, Mr. Krabs, my employer, my master! Pray that you will find it in your heart of hearts to forgive me. Perhaps, after this rock of hardship has eroded by winds of change into the sands of time, your heart and soul will turn about and find peace once more, that calmness of body and soul which all men seek and few men find. That is my misty pink hope for you, sir. Until that hale and hearty time comes upon us, I fear you must lay in these bonds. So thus I must tell you: Adieu. Patrick and I must take our leave from your presence, for if we were to remain in this place we would find ourselves at odds, and your pinioned position would pollute the air with a harried sickness that we could not abide.”

“Spongebob, I can scarcely believe that you would dare carry out such a vile and impetuous action! Liberate me from my bonds at once, you misguided and pitiful wastrel. You have usurped my authority, and that requires me to punish you most severely once I am unbound. Do you not know, are you not aware, that your actions carry consequences? And the consequences of such a vile misdeed as yours are supremely negative! You will pay one-hundredfold for this, I swear on my honor and my daughter! Cut asunder these ropes at once!”

But the sponge and the starfish paid no heed to Mr. Krabs; his demands fell on deliberately deafened ears, and even unto their taking leave of that place, when the crab's mandates softened themselves into supplications and pleas, eventually rendered to nothing more than the most pathetic of begging. Krabs found himself abandoned in the midst of the concert, and through some curious twist of fate, it would be that none of the surrounding patrons came to his aid. The reason for their apathy was then, and remains to the present time, shrouded in a wedding-veil of mystery.

Spongebob and Patrick departed from the epicenter of the concert to make platy. They engaged in their little games in a sunlit spot of merriment, untouched and unconcerned by the numerous sorrows of the earth. Heedless, a burning question tore at Patrick's breast, one so pressing and crushing like some beast's slavering mandibles, that he could not imprison it within the confines of his mind any longer. The children's cries pounded too strongly within his cranium. The bloody tears pricked at the corners of his world-weary eyes. So he opened his heart to his soul-mate and asked of Spongebob thus:

“What do you suppose it feels like to fall to your death? In the liminal moments as you make that final journey from the sky to the ground, passing through the air which will not cradle you, what thoughts fill your mind? Ought you to turn yourself skyward, so that the clouds and sun shall be your last sight, or shall you turn to gaze upon the ground which shall receive you in that last second on the mortal plane? Will you feel your body rent apart as you embrace the earth; will you feel the terra firma crush your bones and burst your skin, bringing forth your lifeblood to water the ground? Or is it as though you have been awakened from a dream – on the mortal plane one instant and in the afterlife the next?

“I once met a man who believed that to fall to one's demise was the noblest way to die; that it was the culmination of all which is human, for the human is the summation of the fallen angel and the rising ape. Humans were born out of the earth from mud and love and therefore ought to return to it in a similar way, even that way being the violent connection of body to ground and the tearing out of the soul. The earth breaks the falling body apart so that the soul may be extracted.”

Spongebob fell silent for many a minute, and at last he spoke. “Patrick, the one who is joined to my soul, I have searched within myself for and answer and found wanting, I fear to say. It seems as though the person of which you speak has been touched by madness.”

“Verily, I understand that, and I was no stranger to a like pattern of thought.”

“Be telling of the truth?” Spongebob inquired. “So you do, indeed, concur with such a thought-pattern?”

“The answer lies in a more complicated form than your question presupposes, my companion,” Patrick answered him. “For it was in my heady and foolish youth I thought so. Ask of me and I shall tell you: I ascribe to the axiom which states that with age comes wisdom. With the passing seasons and rhythm of time, so slow and yet gone before the mind realizes, I have altered my regard. To join answer to your question, I must say no. I no longer believe such things. This change came to pass when I encountered a dissenting opinion from the one to which I was first introduced.

“In my travels, I have also met a woman who thought the antithesis of the man's philosophy; it was her belief that to fall to one's death is the most ignoble means of perishing. To her, the fatal free-fall was symbolic of the casting down of evil and disobedient angels, the impudent ones who made themselves offensive to God and therefore could no longer be permitted within the boundaries of Heaven. Likewise, the one who falls to death on earth mirrors the descent of the damned soul into Hell. It was also her belief that the lost souls in Hell fall forever in a black pit, with no end in sight; like Sisyphus and his fruitless task of raising the rock, there is no end to their descent.”

“Is that the philosophy to which you subscribe, true companion? Am I correct in concluding, thus, that you share this woman's perspective on those who take the fatal plunge – with no considering, I presume, to whether or not that fall was a purposeful action or the flick of Fate's malicious hand?”

“Yea, verily. If I have brought confusion to you, my true and beloved Spongebob, I can only offer you my deepest apologies. It was not my intention to misguide you, for far be it that I ever obscure anything from you. All I desired was to share these haunting thoughts with you. If I had not done so, I fear I may have collapsed and died on this very spot.”

“Is this the truth you speak?” asked the Spongebob once again. “What a strange sort of people you encounter on your way. Have you met many more like them?”

“How sounds the cuckoo if none is around to hear? It may well be so that there were even more souls touched, or perhaps not merely touched but struck and cracked in the skull, by queer thought.”

“Indeed, yes, very much indeed.” Spongebob paused once more, lifting a thoughtful finger to his unsculpted chin. “Though that concert has concluded, do you have any theory for whither our friend-enemy Plankton has gone? Not that blackguard of an impostor, of course, but the true one we have known for all these golden years?”

“I cannot say, for I do not know.” A reddened tear dripped from the Patrick's wet eye. “I do believe, however, that any endeavors we make to locate him will come up worse than we expected. It is my belief that Plankton is soon to depart the mortal plane. In my bones, I can feel this sensation and dread creeping up like a well overflowing. And it is bringing thoughts to mind, dearest Spongebob – dreadful and abhorrent thoughts that no man should have. Shield me from them if you are able, or if you can, shelter me in my distress. Only your love can hold my wounded, shattered soul together.”


	2. Two: Plankton is Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're not thinking "What the actual fuck did I just read," I'm not doing it right.

At that very moment, the eyes of heaven had fallen on a marital dispute. Within the cold and steely confines of that establishment known as the Chum Bucket, two flames whose heat had long dwindled were locked in a lover's quarrel. The _dramatis personae_ of this verbal battle numbered two: the one called Sheldon J. Plankton, and his automatron wife Karen. The origins of their debate mean nothing in the grandest scheme of events in time, and for that reason, their grievances with each other shall not be enumerated; it serves no purpose to this narrative nor does it hold much value for the observer. What remains relevant, thus, is the method by which these old spouses engaged in their domestic debate.

“Wife! Have you not vexed me enough for one day? Can you allow a single hour to pass without your routine approach to me, whereupon you enumerate my all-too-human flaws?” So said the man Plankton, as he wrenched off his overcoat and cast his hat upon the floor, letting them fall like autumn's dying leaves.

Another daily rhythm of sun and sky had passed upon this household, and with no profit and no comeuppance there for to show. For the Plankton was the sole proprietor and sole one-in-employ of an eating establishment, a place where inexpensive comestibles are sold to an eager public, established in direct rivalry to the Krusty Krab adjacent there-to, across the street. It paraded itself under the dubious designation of the “Chum Bucket.” This establishment sorely lacked in success, with few customers and no permanent fixtures to ever permeate its wretched doors. It seemed that fate had snagged up the Plankton in a particularly hateful embrace, that he should never enjoy the good fortune in which his rival reveled. While the Krusty Krab drew in customers by the hundreds in the span of months and years, the Chum Bucket seemed abandoned by all except the lowest and most desperate of beings on the earth, and even then, few such wretches dared draw near.

The automatron wife of the Plankton, she called Karen, took exception, and some umbrage as well, to her husband's apparent ineptitude at the daring game called management and ownership of a restaurant. Although, perhaps the term “restaurant” may be found too generous and therefore libelous for a miserable miscreant's place wherein rotting offal and clotted blood were ground together into a paste, mixed with a never-consistent blend of seasoning to mask the foul odor and worse taste upon the tongue. Furthermore, Plankton scraped it out of its hiding-places, mold and mildew and all, with whatever impurities and adulterous materials nestled themselves in the Chum's meaty embrace. Lower than the lowest of grain residue for the sustenance of animals that Chum was, and it was out of his desperation and miserly attitude that Plankton dared make a living peddling it to the unsuspecting denizens of Bikini Bottom.

Yea, the Plankton's wife took exception, umbrage, and offense to this pathetic and unviable and unscrupulous behavior, and it was on this night in particular that she voiced her concerns in a matter less shielded than prior. Upon her husband's approach into her chambers, thus said Karen:

“I nettle and nag you, Husband, because of your lack of scruple and qualm with the conduction of your behavior. How long shall you take hold of the blame you accrue, and then cast that dark slime onto others, for fear it will stain your dainty hands? I have heard it said from you, 'I have no customers because they lack taste and refinement; they choose the Krabs's blasted burgers over my fare.' And again you have said, for me to hear, that 'All I desire is to exchange my made food for the money offerings of Bikini Bottom, and it comes to no fault of mine if they will not open their stingy hands and give.' Such impropriety I have never known! Immature conduct of yours, Husband! When will you take on the yoke of manhood and carry yourself as you ought, owning thine own mistakes and redressing yourself accordingly?”

“Bah! But stop! Be silent, and keep your tongue behind your teeth. Let me not hear the crack of voice burble up from your strained throat. When the cock crows in the morning, 'Hark and awake,' do you disregard him because his voice grates like metal on metal in your ears? No, you arise from bed and go to your day's work, because thou art full-aware that, though you despise the lay of his cries, the message it carries is nonetheless critical to you, and it is to your deep harm you disregard it. So it is with I myself! It is of no import to me that my words sound offensive to your ears, for in those words themselves lies a truth you dare not deny. The blame evermore lays not on me, but on those imbeciles who will not so much as turn their heads in my direction. Like lemmings drawn to a cliff, they pursue not that which is fulfilling to them, but whatever inane thing they believe will satisfy the banal desire of their bellies. And by which I mean that confounded Krabs and his burgers. It evades me yet again – we draw from the same sum and substance to create our product, our comestibles. Does he not take the offal as well – the cast-off flesh not suitable to be cut into chops and loins? As do I, and the both of us take it and mix in the preserving chemicals and the seasonings to disguise its questionable flavor. We act in an equal manner, and yet here you see him riding on high tides of success while I languish in an empty restaurant, while my shrew of a wife mocks me! Can I not even find peace in my own household? Why must strife lay so heavily on my shoulders?”

“To be corrected is not to be mocked, Husband,” answered Karen. “Are you aware that pencil lead and diamond both come from the base element Carbon? Yet you would hardly call a stump of lead-pencil as good as diamond. So it is with your Chum and the Krabs's burgers. He takes the same material as you, yea, but he takes it in good quality, not the abomindable rubbish you forage. What is more, he takes that material and puts it together in a way the public shall find appetizing. That is the mark of his success. You are as a vaporous reflection in a mirror to him, a rival so deep in misguided actions, so poorly counterfeiting his work, that to conserve the energy would ultimately benefit him far more than pursuing you to destroy you.

“Oh, come off it,” replied the Plankton. “I will give no more ear to your mindless chatter. In fact, I shall presently and at once take my leave of this place. No longer can I thrive in such an environment as this, where my own soul-bonded one decides to hurl barbs at me. I am going on a walk, Karen, and do not follow me. I shall return whenever I see fit.”

“Very well, Plankton. But hear you this: I shall remain even unto your return, and whilst you go about on your constitutional, prithee ponder my words. I think even a small amount of ponderance on them shall render great gains unto you.”

“Forsooth. I am off, like an aimless songfowl cast to the west wind.” Plankton donned his cap and his jacket once more, whereupon he exited the room and then the building itself, making his paths to the outdoors, and perhaps even unto the more vesitigal and wild parts of Nature. Not the tame land of carefully mowed gardens and watched trees, but the remote and twisted places where there grow trees with no master and shrubbery with no name. Spurred on by the cold wind exhaling on his back Plankton ventured there, his psyche ablaze with a thousand thoughts and many more feelings he could not name.

Verily it was not until Plankton had lost himself, both in thought and in body, deep in the woodlands and in the darker corners of his cranial space. He paused there for but a silver thread of a moment, caught on heaven's spindle. The wind changed its direction, falling absent from its presence upon his back.

At once from an unknown source arose a pair of spirits, alike in form and function. They had only the faintest of morphs – silver suggestions on the air. They twisted about each other, like twins in the womb, for they were indeed twins. Though they made themselves small for Plankton, they were all he could see. He could not tear his gaze away from them; they, as would a magnet, invariably turned his attention back to themselves. He had no need to look away from the spirits, for it seemed as though the rest of the world had gone quiet and still. Indeed his own body seemed to fall under the same spell, for he found he could not move any part of himself, and he could barely speak. And when they spoke to him, he could do nothing except listen.

So spoke they: “We are the twin spirits of Sea and Sky...Ha...Ha...Do not ask if anyone else can see us; to you alone have we revealed ourselves. We have excised you from the world so that we may converse, and you cannot enter it again either to move forwards or back; yea, you shall not move until we have finished speaking.

“For you and for now, time has relinquished its hold on you. But it will not hold itself back forever. Indeed, think of how time has led you along according to its will for as long as your memory serves you. Us spirits, we can see into the past from the moment just now put behind us, to the origins of history itself...but we cannot go in the other direction; the future remains undetermined as it stands now. The seeds of the future are planted in the soil of the here and now; every instant holds within it infinite potential, but as time drives us all forward it prunes off the branches of what could happen, in favor of what is happening and what has. Time is unsentimental, driving us all along to its ultimate goal (whatever that goal may be) and leaves us no allowance to mourn or even consider the possibilities it has forever cut off from this realm of reality.

“Your species is one of creation’s most ancient; your ancestors saw the dawn of time—when the flames of an infant sun rose over the mud-slicked hillocks and valleys of a partially formed planet; they were the fruit of the mother planet’s childbirth—the thunder and the marvelous bolt of lightning, the moment when heaven touched earth and birthed life! Out of the stagnant and dead sludge came Life! From those early molecules evolved breath and consciousness and morality. Your ancestors are the noble progenitors of all the living creatures which walk or swim or fly or crawl along this ancient husk of rock in space. And you yourself, you are that nobility condensed into its purest form; millions of years have raged on and here you are nonetheless, unchanged by the ages. Does it not pour life-giving water on your thirsty soul? Why do you weep?

“Do not answer that question for us, for we already know. Despite your most admirable heritage, your kind has remained firmly at the bottom of the great pyramid of life. We will spare you the details, for you are well acquainted with them. And you tire of the way in which nature has tread on you, ground you between its unsympathetic teeth, swallowed and turned you all about. Nature is a blanket of many scarlet threads, and in the most intimate folds of its warp and weft are woven its stony and uncaring rules. The strong must devour the small, and there is none smaller than you. Your destiny is to be passed through and out the gut of a stronger creature. Your fate will have you ground through some larger beast’s maw and then the tracts of its innards. And if not physically, then in some other manner, be it socially or spiritually or mentally or what have you. Do you tire of that, Plankton? Do you tire of being devoured, turned over, and passed through?

“We ask that question rhetorically. Without it, our message to you is incomplete. Our purpose, the reason for which we came to you, is that your time here has expired. Though you have been spared from the jaws of some mindless brute, red in tooth and claw, you have not evaded the jaws of time and fate. Come, come, and join your noble ancestors; among your peers you shall at last find respect. Fly up one final time, and view the world from the high point. It calls you.”

“Do you mean I am to die?” asked Plankton. “Have you come to kill me? If so, would that suggest that Nature has proved unsuccessful in its directive to have me chewed up and passed through? How powerful can Nature be, then, if it cannot kill me with instruments on the bodily plane and must summon spirits from the aetherworld to bring my end?”

“It is not us who call you from this world to the other one,” answered the twin spirits. “We are not assassins nor executioners nor blood-templars of any sort, but messengers. Bring your grievances to Time, and air them not to us. It is Time itself which beckons to you. Are you going to resist its summons? Pray do not. You cannot evade Time.”

Many months passed throughout this conversation, for it moved at a speed entirely its own, ungoverned by the familiar laws of time. At its close, Plankton’s face twitched once. The folds of his countenance tensed and then relaxed for the last time, for verily, that was the last thing the unicellular being would ever do in the realm of the living.

All at once, Plankton’s body lost its mass – it could no longer be weighted down by anything on the material earth. The mortal plane lost its grip on him, and consequently he rose up, higher and higher, past the waters of the great ocean and into the skies above, and higher still, until he passed through the envelope of air which surrounds our planet, and it was there that he stopped. He looked down at everything mortal hands and minds have constructed. For a moment, he saw everything. He gazed upon hopes and dreams, fears and petty anxieties, births and deaths, hatred and love, wars and spells of peace, empires risen and fallen, kings born and then cast to the dust to be eaten by worms, history told not through small and biased minds but as it truly was, the one true objective sequence of events. He could never speak of the things he witnessed, for he understood that by merit of having seen them at all, he had entered into a wordless and still binding contract, one which swore him to silence. He would be required to remain silent on what he had seen not only in the mortal plane, but in the Thereafter as well. The Thereafter into which he would very soon pass.

Then he died. From the earth below, the remaining members of his family gazed on, crudely detailed onto the floor of the planet. Plankton was dead, as simple as that, dead and no more on the mortal plane, and who is to know what happened to him in whatever lay beyond. Even so, in his final transient moment between the living and the dead, Plankton had an expression upon his countenance that demands attention with its significance. He stood there, perfectly forlorn, and then he was gone.


End file.
